Among major themes that emerged in late twentieth-century American Jewish fiction focusing on women, some of the most important included: the role of the Holocaust in the identity of survivors, their children, and the broader Jewish community; Israel as a focal point of American Jewish identity and a setting for the exploration of Jewish identity; a variety of religious and cultural subgroups within Jewish life, such as Sephardi Jewish communities, ultra-Orthodox communities, and feminist groups; sexual subgroups, such as Jewish lesbians and homosexuals; gendered relationships and the tension between intellectual and sensual, personal and professional, or Jewish and humanistic agendas in the lives of contemporary American Jewish women.

On displacement — since my forebears along with many Sephardi Jews were displaced from Muslim Andalusia at the time of the Spanish Reconquista and we ended up in the UK, I feel some sympathy for all displaced persons and refugees.

Again, there was a lot of cross fertilisation of ideas based on “my father says ...” stories and it was one of the Sephardi boys who told me that his father was very much a non zionist who had opposed partition and that he was always saying that some of the zionists were no better than thugs and that partition would end in tears.

Unsolicited, you recounted your personal experiences as one of the non-Christians at an English public school, telling us what the father of a Sephardi Jewish student told him and he in turn told you about what in his view should have happened in the Mandate Territories.